


Five Times Andrew Missed His Soul and One Time He Found It

by Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)



Series: Twinyards Appreciation Week [6]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Andrew is the boy without a soul, Faerie AU, M/M, Magic AU, Sexual content is only implied, but I'm warning for it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 04:04:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12622772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth
Summary: Written for Twinyards Appreciation Week.  Day 6: AU.  Andrew and Aaron were once one child, torn in two to fulfil a faerie debt.  But a human soul cannot be divided and Aaron took it all.  Andrew searches for a way to fill the emptiness.





	Five Times Andrew Missed His Soul and One Time He Found It

1.  
He is three days old and he remembers everything. He remembers the pain most of all. He was ripped out of oblivion into awareness, fire licking up his chest and back. A strange woman stood above him chanting. And he thinks that moments ago, he had been scared. His face is wet but he can’t remember how to cry. He barely has the sense of being broken, or being torn apart, before his body is whole again.

He looks to the right and he sees him, himself that was? A child, screaming, angry red lines on his torso slowly fading into scars.

Another woman, he thinks she is his mother, bundles the other child up in her arms. She leaves and he feels a tether between him and the other. It stretches tight and the other boy screams. His mother turns back.

“Is something wrong?” she asks.

“It isn’t a clean cut. I might have missed some. Keep walking. The connection will not hold.” So she keeps walking. And he feels the tether, tight in his core, start to loosen. She leaves and it doesn’t break. Instead it tears out by the roots and he feels the void yawning inside. He knows he’s lost something and he doesn’t know what it feels like to want, not really, but he thinks that things would be better if he hadn’t lost that part of himself so long ago.

2.  
Andrew is four years old and he is a monster. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to be whole so he doesn’t understand why the faerie, Etressa, looks at him like he’s broken. He knows she isn’t his mother and he wonders if a real one might be different. He thinks of the boy he remembers on the day he was last real and whole. Sometimes he looks in the mirror and pretends his reflection is his twin and he isn’t alone, that all he needs to fill the emptiness inside is to reach out and reattach.

He can see Etressa’s self loathing every time he looks into her eyes. He thinks that is how he might feel if he could. 

“You have to leave,” she says one day. “The spells I wanted you for require a child with a soul and I’m tired of looking at you.”

He doesn’t argue. He isn’t surprised. But he wonders, as his short legs struggle to carry him out of the swamp, if he’ll ever find something that feels this close to home.

3.  
Andrew is six years old and he tries to pretend he’s real. He finds a childless home and tries to be what they want. It works for a while. He helps with chores. He goes to school. He imitates the other kids’ chatter when he goes home. He pretends to cry when the dog refuses to go near him and he sleeps with the cat every night, hoping that if he pretends to love something hard enough, it will be true.

But he can’t keep it up. The man is suspicious and takes him to a healer and the truth comes out.

He doesn’t tell his wife but that night he comes to Andrew’s bedroom. 

“You’re not a real boy. So this isn’t wrong,” the man grunts as he crushes Andrew beneath him. And Andrew wishes he knew how to cry. And he wonders what magic a soul has that would protect him from this. 

4.  
Andrew is eleven years old and he finds something else to fill the void inside. Cassandra is a talented witch and she offers to teach him all she knows. He worries that this too is something that his lack of soul will bar him from but to his surprise, he is not only able to perform magic, he is a natural. He is strong. For the first time in his life, he feels like he has a place in the world. And then he surpasses his teacher. She’s so proud, she cries and Andrew pretends, wanting to give something back to her. 

“Good news,” she says two days later. “I’ve found you a teacher. My son, Drake, has been away studying under the masters. He is a master in his own right. And he has chosen to return here and become our village wizard. He’s eager to meet you.”

And something flickers in Andrew, like the look in Cassandra’s eyes as she looks at the letter from her son, and like his neighbor Jared jumping up and down. He thinks it’s something like excitement.

And then Drake is like all the rest.

And Andrew doesn’t even say goodbye.

He is on Etressa’s doorstep a day later. He shows her what he is learned and promises to serve her if she gives him faerie magic. It rushes into the void inside of him and it doesn’t quite fit but he feels less wrong. This is all he can expect as the boy without a soul.

5.  
Andrew is fifteen years old and collecting payment from villagers for services renders when he sees him. The magic that fills him means no one can hide from him. He senses them all. But this boy, with dark curls and sparkling his eyes, is invisible when he closes his eyes.

“Aaron,” the boy shouts, running across the village square. “It’s me! Nicky!” Andrew doesn’t understand that the boy is calling for him until he reaches his side.

“I am not Aaron,” Andrew says plainly.

“You’re not?” Nicky looks closer. “I could have sworn…”

And Andrew realizes with a thrill of...something, that this boy knows his other half.

But the boy’s shouts across the square did not go unnoticed and the atmosphere is already changing as men, dangerous men, are staring at them both.

“Abomination,” one of them hisses and Andrew prepares to melt away when he realizes they aren’t talking about him.

“Get out of here,” another man shouts. “We don’t like your kind.” He picks up a rock to throw.

Nicky cries out as a previously unnoticed young man hits him in the shoulder with a rock. And Andrew needs to know what this boy knows and he can’t just let these people kill him.

He cries out and the magic rushes out of him and he and Nicky are the only conscious ones in the square.

He ends up in front of a faerie court because faerie magic did the deed. He hold his arms out as they encase his forearms in black iron. It hurts. But worse than the pain is that it cuts him off from his magic and he feels empty, empty, empty again.

+1  
Andrew is still fifteen years old and he is no longer a threat. They haven’t bothered to imprison him. The iron will make him safe. And so he follows Nicky home. Nicky would not have feared him anyway. He is immune. No magic can touch him. 

And then Nicky takes him to visit his mother. He recognizes her. She looks older. She looks broken. She won’t look at him. 

But Aaron is there too. Andrew reaches his hand out. Aaron mirrors him. They touch once, palm to palm, and Andrew feels the tether snapping into place. And it’s like a grain of sand in an endless abyss, but Andrew is no longer empty.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Five Times Aaron’s Soul Tried to Find a Home and One Time It Succeeded](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596338) by [Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth)




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